The internet allows people to access everything simultaneously, but it’s not so much a river, rather a really shallow ocean.

Chuck Klosterman

Cultures of the past thought they were doing things ‘right’. But time passes, ideas shift, opinions invert – and now, their ideas seem wrong. How will our current culture hold up? Chuck Klosterman thinks that if we can look back on the present as if it were the distant past, we might be able to see things more clearly.

By questioning contemporary certainties – is it possible that we overrate democracy? How seriously should we view the content of our dreams? Is it possible that we’ve reached the end of knowledge? He encourages a more realistic approach to reasoning: “the best hypothesis is the one that reflexively accepts its potential wrongness to begin with”.

This conversation was chaired by Marc Fennell, interviewer and host of The Feed SBS.

This talk is part of the UNSW Grand Challenge on Living with 21st Century Technology, and was recorded live on stage at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas 2018.